Archive

This extract from Pause, Rewind, Natural Anti-Ageing Techniques by Nawaz Modi Singhania is reprinted in Parsiana with permission from the publishers Penguin Random House India.

I was born underweight with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck several times over. I was white as a sheet and wasn’t breathing — they thought I was stillborn. Somehow, against all odds, I survived. I was small, weak and had a mitral valve prolapse (a genetic cardiac condition which affects the mitral valve between the left heart chambers, leading to an improper closure of the valve between the upper and lower chambers). I have worked slowly towards getting stronger, fitter and more able.

When I was 10 years old, my parents split up. I remained with my father and my brothers. It was an awful time. I was a pre-teen, my body was undergoing various changes and I didn’t know what to do. It was very awkward and there was no woman in the house to guide me on all things female. My grandparents lived in the flat next door, but my grandmother was dying of cancer and so was in no condition to be of any help to me in these matters.

  being navjoted by uncle Ervad (Dr) Jamshed Modi; with cousins at a zoo

I started emotional binge eating — a subconscious way of coping. I realized much later in life that my emotions were deeply connected with my eating disorder. It had knocked my self-esteem down a peg or two and made me gain weight, lose my health, look older than my (then young) years and feel far worse. It dawned on me that eating to somehow feel better was actually hurting me much more than it was helping! The self-realization was very important in being able to stack up on whether this was serving me or sinking me. It enabled me to make wiser choices in my own best interest.

I was close to my mother Homai and was supposed to leave with her after the divorce, but an incident occurred that made me change my mind. I felt that, as a young kid, I actually stood up to the situation and showed a lot of strength of character by being there for my two brothers and my father Nadir as they were falling apart in different ways, as I was too. I would be the one telling them that things were going to be okay. They, in their own ways, were struggling to make the best of a bad situation and were trying very hard to be there for me too.

Slowly, I started seeing the good in things. I realized that once my mother was gone, I got to rule the roost by running the house, the kitchen, managing the staff and calling the shots, all by default. My proverbial dark clouds had very large silver linings.

When I am low, I think back on the time that I was born and of how touch-and-go and bleak that time was. I remember that however bad things can sometimes be now, they are a zillion times better than back then. I think it sometimes helps to start from right down there at the bottom of the well, because from there, the only place to look at, is up — things can only get better. The thought is beautifully worded somewhere — why would a person choose to sit at the bottom of a well, when God had given them two strong arms to pull themselves up and out?

Good and bad happens to all of us. It is a part and parcel of living on planet earth. One has to learn to deal with the downside of things in a much healthier fashion, process and metabolize them (if you will) in time, and come out stronger, wiser and healthier. That’s the goal.